Editorial | Don’t forget the poor

Ever since this crisis began people could understand what it will lead to. The kind of disruption it will do was easily graspable, though one would tend to be in denial. And this is a typical characteristic of any deep crisis. People talked about effects on education and are still talking about it. One immediate remedy that was taken recourse to is the online education. This is now almost a practice with all our schools. At least this is keeping our children busy, and giving them a sense of being in a class. Though, we all know that it can’t be a substitute for regular class based education. Similarly people talked about the disastrous impact on economy, and to this governments around the world woke up immediately. Huge bail out packages were announced, and the governments and the inter governmental institutions are consistently thinking about what to do if the economy has to be kept afloat. The most pressing human concern in all this is about the poorest of poor. Those daily wage earners, vendors, and small shopkeepers – this pandemic has snatched their livelihood. In our valley we have seen hundreds of small groups working hard to provide food and essentials to  the poor families.

But it demands a huge effort and may be our small organisations cannot muster that tall effort. In this situation what is the alternative. This crisis is stretching further and there are no signs of normality returning any soon. And we cannot leave these unfortunate people to die of hunger. One way of making these efforts last long, and be effective, is to devise a method and follow it. The Mohalla level committees can make an index of their respective areas and categorise people on the basis of the need, and urgency.  They should also try to identify people who have regular income, and are well off. Using this data we can ask some well off families to take care of some poor families for a longer period of time. This way we can help poor for the months to come, till the situation changes for good.

   

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